Moral Judgement Quotes & Sayings

Life is a manifestation of the fundamental laws of physics, and in its highest form, life manifests the fundamental laws of physics as a human organism endowed with a capacity for moral judgement. — Joseph B.H. McMillan

Only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgement can be regarded as moral, pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality. — Ayn Rand

A moral judgment of abortion is the usage of a man-made ideology to judge a man-made technology. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If a culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, as a healing crisis and opportunity. Being sick is then not a condemnation or a moral judgement, but a movement in a larger process of healing and restoration. When sickness is viewed positively and in supportive terms, then illness has a much better chance to heal, with the concomitant result that the entire person may grown and be enriched in the process. — Ken Wilber

The little individualist, recognizing his individual impotence, realizing that he did not possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgement against his big brother, began to change his point of view. He no longer hoped to right all things by his individual efforts. He turned to the law, to the government, to the state. — Walter Weyl

Without making any moral judgements whatsoever, one can say that self-indulgence and excessive self-preoccupation are the antithesis of genuine awareness. — Ronald Rolheiser

Beware of the good Nazi ... Because they compared themselves by the standard they themselves created. Each, in his own eyes, was a good Nazi, a moral Nazi, a decent Nazi, a religious Nazi, and a Nazi no worse than the next. For by seeing themselves in their own eyes, they become blind. But their judgement would come in the form of destruction, and their sins would be exposed before the world ... You can never judge yourself by your own standards and your own righteousness, but only in the light of His righteousness. — Jonathan Cahn

If an instrument similar to a geiger-counter could be invented that counted moral judgements instead, we would learn to duck as people became increasingly 'moral', since lethal force is usually imminent. So far from moral fervour being an alternative to force, it is frequently the overture, the accompaniment and the memorial to it. — Charles Hampden-Turner

I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important ... It is the most noble of all the attributes of man. — Charles Darwin

What is it to make a moral judgement, or to argue about an ethical issue, or to live according to ethical standards? How do moral judgements differ from other practical judgements? Why do we regard a woman's decision to have an abortion as raising an ethical issue, but not her decision to change her job? What is the difference between a person who lives by ethical standards and one who doesn't? — Peter Singer

In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery ... — Flannery O'Connor

Intellectual representations are the activity itself, dependent on a kind of consciousness that is skeptical, engaged, unremittingly devote to rational investigation and moral judgement; and this puts the individual on record and on the line. Knowing how to use language well and knowing when to intervene in language are two essential features of intellectual action. — Edward W. Said

The belief that ignites hope in the heart of a person to survive is the same belief that boosts the ego of the person and deters his progress by clouding his judgments. — Adhish Mazumder

Second, we will not shake our heads and roll our eyes self-righteously at what 'they' are like. Paul has referred to 'they' throughout these verses[...] The function of these verses is to draw out any self-righteous pride in us; any feeling of satisfaction that: 'They are wicked; and I am not like them.' As we will see, Paul will next turn to confront that religious, moral man: 'You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself' (2:1). Self-righteousness is always self-condemnatory. — Timothy J. Keller

That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself. — Philip K. Dick

How so much honourable is such a contest, in which one's moral conduct and achievement are brought as witnesses rather than the size of one's purse.
#Page: 10 — Kazuo Ishiguro

I often feel the pressure, from my peers and others, to come out and "take a stand" on a moral or social issue. Typically, I refuse to do so, or at least I refuse to do so in a way that will please my critics. On so many of the hard and divisive issues of our times, I don't close my eyes. I do stand for something: I stand for love. For if Jesus came, not to condemn the world, but to redeem it, how can we who bear the Name respond any differently? Yes, what I believe about all these moral and social issues matters, without a doubt. But these beliefs mean nothing, if my first and consuming conviction is not love for those who are different and believe differently than me. We have a choice: We can choose to show how "right" we are, or we can choose to love. Sometimes, it is impossible to do both at the same time. — Ronnie McBrayer

Jews refuse to apply Kant's categorical imperative and be limited by universal rules. We might attempt a definition of a Jew as someone unable to make an objective moral judgement. His arguments will forever vary according to whether the subject is good for Jews or bad for Jews. WMD are bad in gentile hands but good in Jewish ones. Gentile nationalism is bad, devotion to the Jewish cause is good. Equal rights for Jews and non-Jews is good in Europe but bad in Palestine. — Israel Shamir

She was struck by how mostly slim white people got off at the stops in Manhattan and, as the train went further into Brooklyn, the people left were mostly black and fat. She had not thought of them as "fat," though. She had thought of them as "big," because one of the first things her friend Ginika told her was that "fat" in America was a bad word, heaving with moral judgement like "stupid" or "bastard," and not a mere description like "short" or "tall." So she had banished "fat" from her vocabulary. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What can the Church do? If she stands by her moral teaching, then she will be seen as standing in judgement over a vast percentage of Europeans. — Timothy Radcliffe

Corbyn's words imply a serious lack of moral judgement. Just as all Muslims are not to blame for ISIS, not all Brits are to blame for [Jeremy] Corbyn. — Tzipi Livni

Would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction? — Immanuel Kant

At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser. — H.L. Mencken

People have set moral standards for me my entire life, yet they have always left off the ones that they couldn't keep. — Shannon L. Alder

When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to its destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgement are better left unmade. — Lytton Strachey

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgement go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation of personality, the anxious division of the day-time and the night-time sides of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation. — C. G. Jung

And the matron sighed over the destiny of ladies in good society, whose moral judgement led them to love unabashedly and whose depravity led them to pay for it. — Michelle Franklin

...I am discovering that it is truly a mistake--it may even be a moral wrong, in fact--to judge. Truth is too complex, too contradictory, too mercurial, to be one-sided, though it is human nature to prefer the reassurance and ease of firm judgement. Judgement helps us to justify our less savory actions. — Melissa Pritchard

Physiologically, it simply doesn't matter whether your anger is justified or not. The body doesn't make moral judgements about feelings; it just responds. — Doc Childre

The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale profusion of denunciations of all sorts. Starting with Marx and Nietzsche, materialists have never been able to refrain from passing continuous moral judgement on all and sundry, which their whole philosophy might be expected to discourage them from doing. — Luc Ferry

There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly. — David Smail

Genesis knew he was crossing a line within his own moral boundaries and judgement but he pushed straight through it nonetheless. His job required him to be morally neutral and for the first time in his entire life he was actually having to introspectively consider that he was slightly more judgemental than even he had realised. — Jill Thrussell

At the heart of the pain created by sexual rejection is our habit of interpreting it as a moral judgement, when it might more accurately be categorized as a mere accident. We can start to break free from this torture by recognizing that the evenings that don't work out are really just a minor species of bad luck. The — Alain De Botton

When a heroine is satisfied that she has exercised judgement with clear vision, moral principle,and common sense, she need not acquiesce to opposing viewpoints. — Jane Austen

It's never been integral to the story that I take my clothes off. I've always had clauses in my contracts saying no nudity and no body doubles ... I admire actresses who can do it without feeling exploited. As long as it's their own free will, I think it's great. It's not a moral judgement, I've just never felt comfortable doing it - I'm too modest. — Sarah Jessica Parker

As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision. — Napoleon Bonaparte

John the Baptist, who we are told was related by blood to Jesus, was preaching the impending judgement of God, urging repentance and moral reform, and baptizing in the Jordan River those who responded. — Kenneth Scott Latourette

Women's deference is rooted not only in their social subordination but also in the substance of their moral concern. Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgement other points of view. — Carol Gilligan

Suspending moral judgement is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel's wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity. Not that the novelist utterly denies that moral judgement is legitimate, but that she refuses it a place in the novel. — Milan Kundera

We ourselves have so long ceased to use it [the Christian worldview] except for the discussion of the moral, the liturgical, or the spiritual, that it is rusty and out of date. We have no Christian vocabulary to match the complexities of contemporary political, social, and industrial life. We have long ceased to bring Christian judgement to bear upon the secular public world. — Harry Blamires

On the other hand, if God's moral judgement differs from ours so that our 'black' may be His 'white', we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say 'God is good', while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say 'God is we know not what'. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) 'good' we shall obey, if at all, only through fear - and should be equally ready to obey omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity - when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing - may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.
- The Problem of Pain, pp. 28 - 29 — C.S. Lewis

Don't place some vague moral judgement on yourself based on what others might think. Don't waste your energy. — E.L. James